


Down Goes the Library

by writer_zo



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Uh oh! Az is in love now, lots of fire, the FIRST bookshop fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 15:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19298860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_zo/pseuds/writer_zo
Summary: Crowley is travelling through Alexandria, a lovely city, while the Roman army lays siege to it from the outside. When the library starts to burn down, it's up to him to save the foolhardy angel still inside. But that's all he'll do. Just rescue him and go.





	Down Goes the Library

**Author's Note:**

> If one of you dares to tell me I got some namby pamby "HISTORICAL FACT" wrong, I will burn your house down. I did about half an hour of lazy Wikipedia research and by God Herself, you'll like it.

It was a lovely day in Alexandria. Or, it would have been a lovely day, if smoke weren’t blocking out the sun almost entirely, and people weren’t screaming, and the distant sounds of an empire being brought to its knees weren’t so bothersome.

“The Greeks really had a good run here, didn’t they?” Crowley asked, watching as Ligur made a fleeing citizen stumble in front of a Roman footsoldier. Crowley, in a far more subtle move, made the Roman’s cheap jab at the man’s hand miss, and the citizen managed to hurl himself to his feet and scramble away. 

“Lousy place,” Ligur said, ignoring Crowley’s comment. “Not in the good way. In the bad way. Smells good here. Cleaner than most.”

“Oh, yes, you’d find that terrible,” Crowley muttered, miracling another mead for himself (one that may have been much more alcoholic than the usual mead). His head ached, and he didn’t care. The old serpent decided to take a holiday from the Roman mainland and, wouldn’t you know it, he’d ended up right in front of their army. How fun.

“‘Course,” Ligur replied, “I’ll be glad when they finally start burning  _ everything _ .”

“Hold on, I thought they were already doing that?” Crowley said, squinting. His eyes stung a bit, and he miracled the smoke away from the abandoned shop again, wishing he could save the whole of the city, take a cigarette the size of the colossus and and wick up all the fire before handing it off to the Almighty. There was nothing necessary about this evil, and it was making his skin crawl.

Ligur laughed. It sounded like gravel being mashed through a sieve.

“They haven’t done anythin’ yet.” He said, his strange, pale eyes darkening in a way that had nothing to do with their hue. “Hastur’s already out there licking the walls, getting a jump on it. Everything’s gonna taste like blood soon. You’ll see.”

“Oh,” Crowley said, gazing into the honey-gold surface of his mead, where his face was reflected in soft relief. “Hmm.”

He’d foregone his glasses this morning, as soon as the first wave of true panic rocked the city. As a demon, he should have woken with a spring in his step, greeted the morning with a  _ Howdy doo, Alexandria, lovely to see you all on fire.  _

He might have been able to fake glee (well, a demon’s brand of glee), if he hadn’t imagined Aziraphale sitting up next to him in his room in the inn and taking his hand with horror in his eyes. If he hadn’t seen the face of a little boy fleeing a jeering group of looters, the terror of wondering where his gods and muses have gone. 

The inexplicable feeling of knowing you have, that you  _ must _ have done something terrible, because why would Heaven turn to Hell so suddenly, and why did you feel like you were falling from a great height when the streets had supported you so well all your life?

Crowley knew that feeling well. It was why, before a chameleon turned up on his doorstep and led Crowley to the abandoned shop and Ligur, Crowley had taken the boy under his arm and hidden him safely in a house that would, mysteriously, stay standing through the entire siege, and baffle future archaeologists with the extent of its preservation.

“Look,” Ligur said, pointing, “there they go. I think they’re going to circle the cow place.”

“Museums aren’t for cows,” Crowley said, dropping his cup onto the table with a grimace. He was no longer thirsty. “I’ve mentioned this before.”

“Whatever. Seizure’s there.”

“Caesar.” Crowley said. “And what’s he doing?”

“The Heaven do you think?” Ligur said. “They’re setting it on fire.”

Crowley’s heart dropped. Of course they were. Aziraphale would be heartbroken. The Mouseion, the Shrine of the Muses and the arts gone, and for no reason. Not to mention that lovely library they had. All of it gone. Every hand-copied book.

He found that he was, in fact, thirsty for the mead, and he swallowed it in one gulp. Lousy day indeed.

Ligur licked his lips, slowly, rolling out his neck with a series of wet cracks that made Crowley’s skin crawl. He watched as the demon dipped a finger into his own cup, the liquid turning bright for a moment before igniting. Ligur smiled. It didn’t take much to entertain most demons. This was more than enough.

Crowley watched it as the alcohol caught, imagining Aziraphale.  _ Why’d Crowley have to go and keep imagining the angel?  _ He was, right now, imagining Aziraphale swearing up a storm--something he was sure the angel would never actually do--and pointing as the flames rose higher over the museum, running over to save it like an idiot. He would. He’d go right into an inferno for those books.

“Hey,” Ligur said, drawing Crowley’s eyes up from the fire at long last. “Look at that. Someone’s going right into the inferno for those books.”

Crowley’s head whipped up, and his mouth opened unbidden as he saw his adversary, hair a mess and face full of panicked and oh-so-flammable, running right into the building even as the timber screamed in agony and creaked, moments from breaking.

He was up from the chair so suddenly that he toppled his empty cup, leaving it to shatter on the floor, and out the door with a clattering that left Ligur calling  _ What the Heaven are you doing _ ? after him and wondering whether to drag Hastur away from the wall-licking excursion to track the serpent.

If Ligur had followed Crowley, he would have seen the man tear across the wide road so quickly that one of his sandals came off, seen him follow Aziraphale as the angel tore open what may have once been a door and what may have once just been part of the building and run inside, fire already licking at his back.

“What in the blazes--Aziraphale! You can’t go in there!” Crowley cried out. He turned into the building and miracled himself, keeping his breathing clear. It would keep him alive so long as he got the Something out as soon as possible.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale was in the middle of the room, eyes red, grabbing at whatever he could find. He hadn’t even  _ bothered _ to protect himself. He looked mad and wild and frail. It terrified Crowley to see him so close to the fire, so close to being discorporated, and the demon crossed the room in an instant to grab him.

“Yes, it’s me. Angel, we need to get out of here!” Crowley said, “It’s done. They did it. We can’t save them.”

“I’m not leaving the books!” Aziraphale shouted. His eyes were wide, his voice raw, his hands shaking as he held them. “Is this  _ your _ doing?!”

Crowley felt as though he’d been hit in the face with the blunt side of a gladius (and he knew how that felt from experience). He didn’t understand--despite his eyes, despite everything about him--why Angel would think that. Why he would ever  _ do _ this.

“I would never hurt something…” Crowley choked on the words. “Something you loved

this much, but we need to go!”

Aziraphale looked at him, wide-eyed, then looked to the creaking, aching roof above them. A book fell from a high shelf and caught fire mid-air, showering them in ash. The angel didn’t flinch when a piece of burning paper landed on his shoulder, and Crowley was forced to tear it off of him. The angel was crying, and not from the smoke.

“I want to know who,” Aziraphale said, shout trailing into a cry. “and I-I want to know why.”

Crowley stood there, staring as the angel pulled the volumes he’d managed to save more closely to him. He didn’t know what to do--what to say to make anything better, but the roof was starting to really give way, and Aziraphale’s chest was rattling, and Crowley could only see one way out as shelvescrashed around the exits.

“We have to fly.” He said. “Angel. We’ve got to fly.”

Aziraphale said nothing. Crowley’s own face fell as his angel’s crumpled, close to tears, and he put an arm around him to try to snap him out of it.

“We have to fly!” He repeated, urgently, to no avail. Aziraphale finally looked at him, haloed by the fire all around, and Crowley knew that he was a dead man walking, that his mind had gone dark. The demon, in a moment of quick planning, swept Aziraphale off his feet, staggering back a bit as he hefted him in his arms, and the angel finally stirred, yelping and clutching the books as Crowley’s jet wings tore into the air around them.

“Crow--just leave! Just leave me here!” Aziraphale said, shaking like a leaf. “You’re unbalanced and you won’t make it off the ground!”

“Of course I will!” Crowley said, sounding far more confident than he was. He gauged the distance to the arching roof, the size of the largest hole in the wood, and grabbed his acq--Hell, grabbed his  _ friend _ with all of his might and pushed up like a Furie from Hades.

It took a long, searing moment of flight, and then they were out, and the air was cool, and Aziraphale was safe, and Aziraphale was--perhaps (just perhaps) they were both--crying.

\---

Aziraphale woke up a few hours later with a throat that felt like a packed dirt road. He tried to swallow, grimacing, and blinked slowly as a cold, damp cloth made its way over his forehead. His breath hitched as he remembered his books, as he felt his arms empty, but he couldn’t sit up no matter how hard he tried to push himself.

“Shh,” came a young voice to his right. “Shh. The Eudaemon said you were hurt.”

Eudaemon. Spirit of protection. How ironic. Aziraphale was a lot closer to that than Crowley, wasn’t he? He was supposed to be the angel, protector of the Garden of Eden, Guardian of the Eastern Gate. And here he was, avoiding discorporation (and a rather painful one at that) only by the grace and rash rescue plans of his old rival. He wondered if he could have done more, changed more, taken more, but he couldn’t--not when Gabriel told him that the burning was part of the Great Plan.

“Mis’rable old Gabriel,” he murmured, finally managing to push himself to a sitting position. The boy in front of him, whose small hands were slowly nursing him back into consciousness, stepped back once, looking him over with the eyes of someone far too old for his body. He nodded to the boy, who inclined his head respectfully in return, brown skin flecked with ash and what Aziraphale hoped dearly was someone else’s blood for the boy’s sake. 

“I’m glad you’re awake,” the boy said. His voice wavered slightly. “Your friend saved my life, too.”

“He did?” Aziraphale asked, feeling as though the cold water in the cloth had been wrung out over his head. “But--why--”

“Said he didn’t want me to have to meet Death, because Death’s a… what’s the word… wanker?” the boy said, as the angel struggled to picture Crowley taking this boy’s hand, leading him to salvation.  _ But he did save me, didn’t he?  _ “I’m Alec, by the way.”

“It’s… good to meet you.” Aziraphale managed to swing his legs off the small bed, looking around the room. His heart sank when he didn’t see the books or Crowley. They’d probably fallen when they were flying, but at least he was still alive, and maybe the books were somewhere around the city, scattered to the winds, tucked into an alley or caught in the tiles of a sheltered roof.

“Good to meet you, too,” Alec said, eyes downcast. “I wish I could have done it sooner. I don’t have a home any more.”

“Now, I’m sure you’ll be alright,” Aziraphale said, clearing his throat. He quickly miracled away the awful dryness, wincing as his vocal chords abruptly came back to full ability. “Maybe not today, but you will. It’s always… difficult when something terrible happens to you.”

His eyes strayed to the doorway behind the boy. He was thinking of Crowley, picturing the man who had run through fire to take him into the cool air of the sky, who had carried him even as he drifted off into nothingness with badly singed books in his hands. Alec put away the sponge and nodded to himself, chewing his lower lip, and got to his feet with a sigh.

“You sound like you know from experience,” Alec said, giving him a strange look.

“Well, perhaps,” Aziraphale said, quickly. Really, he was thinking from someone else’s experience. “My--er-- _ the eudaemon  _ likely mirac--erm, I mean,  _ set a blessing upon this house _ , so we’ll be fine during the siege. I do wish he were here to tell me how to get out once it’s all over.”

“Oh, he’s right in the next room.”

Aziraphale blinked, then shook his head a little, ensuring that he’d heard correctly. 

“He’s still here?” Aziraphale asked, scratching the back of his neck, “Goodness, I would have thought he--”

“Yes, he is,” Alec interrupted, standing up. “He’d barely let me take over from him, standing over you. I think he loves you, you know.”

Aziraphale continued to gawk as Alec crossed the room, waving as he turned out of the door and down the hall. The angel stood up, stumbling to the door after him, wanting to know what that meant, what any of this meant, and was just too late to catch him. He turned in the other direction, where he could hear some rustling around, and slowly walked that way, preparing himself to thank the serpent. How odd. Thanking a demon.

“Bless these books to Heaven.”

Aziraphale tensed as he peered around the corner, where Crowley was hunched over the pile, hands brushing right over one of the book’s pages. He watched, afraid, as the demon placed a finger on the page, then watched in bafflement as the demon healed* a scorch mark on the book and placed it on the pile of other books, which all looked remarkably well kept and far less tattered than they had when he’d grabbed them in his frantic arms.

He stepped around the corner, silent, and asked, “Crowley?”

The demon lurched up, nearly knocking over his pile of books, then grabbed them to steady them, trying to look nonchalant. “Angel! I didn’t--I didn’t see you.”

“What are you doing?” He asked, staring at the nearly-pristine volumes. 

“No! I mean, nothing.” Crowley cleared his throat, sliding on a pair of black-paned spectacles. “Nothing. Just reading.”

“Reading away the stains?” Aziraphale tried, brushing a hand over the stack. Crowley tried to push it away, awkwardly cupping his own hand around Aziraphale’s, then dropped it to his side, swallowing, face irritated.

“Just--” Crowley said. “You looked disappointed. They did a bad thing, burning down the library.”

“They did,” Aziraphale said, taking one of the books. “But, well, your side approves of this sort of thing.”

“I don’t,” Crowley said, with a ferocity that should have made him step back, but didn’t. “I don’t.”

Aziraphale was suddenly overcome with a strange urge to get very close to this demon. To take his face in his and kiss him, just once, to take those callussed healing-hands in his own. He forced it down, but didn’t start blubbering or stammering or just leaving the room like he should have--instead, he threw his arms around Crowley, as the demon yelped and stepped back, almost off-balance again.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale breathed. Crowley’s breath was a cool breeze against the flushed skin of his ear, shaky and unsure. “Thank you… dear.”

“Oh. That’s, erm, that’s new.” Crowley said. “Dear. That’s a new word.”

“I think it fits.” Aziraphale said, tears in his eyes, smiling into his shoulder. He couldn’t see it, but Crowley had begun smiling, too.

 

*Wikipedia says: Raphael is an archangel responsible for healing in the traditions of most Abrahamic religions. Wikipedia is wrong. Raphael  _ was  _ an archangel responsible for healing in the traditions of most Abrahamic religions. He has gone by a different name ever since he, how do you say, “sauntered downward” many years ago.

  
  



End file.
